3of 19Chef Dennis Lee of Namu Gaji takes a photo of a completed dish during dinner service.Photo: Stephen Lam / Special to The Chronicle 2016

4of 19What are the best restaurants for vegetarians in San Francisco? Click through to see Yelp's top picks. Pictured: Greens in Fort Mason.Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle

5of 1915) Burma LoveThe Mission spinoff of Burma Superstar has a slightly different menu from its predecessors, but don't worry - the tea leaf salad is still there. It comes with dried shrimp, but you can order vegetarian. This restaurant isn't purely vegetarian, but the menu features an entire vegetables and tofu section. 211 Valencia St., (415) 861-2100, Yelp reviewsPhoto: Burma Superstar

7of 1913) Udupi PalaceThe Mission District branch of the chain based in South India serves some of the area's best dosas. The menu is all vegetarian and the dosas feature paper-thin rice flour crepes stuffed with fillings such as spicy potatoes, chutney and spinach. 1007 Valencia St., (415) 970-8000, Yelp reviewsPhoto: Frederic Larson, The Chronicle

10of 1910) Mensho Tokyo RamenPeople line up out the door for ramen at this outpost of the Tokyo restaurant that's known to serve the best noodle soups in Japan. Vegan and vegetarian options offered. 672 Geary St., (415) 800-8345, Yelp reviewsPhoto: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle

12of 198) Ananda FuaraAll the fare is vegetarian at this restaurant run by the followers of Sri Chinmoy, an Indian Guru who has a small following in the Bay Area. The dal, a lentil stew, is a favorite. 1298 Market St.,
(415) 621-1994, Yelp reviewsPhoto: Kurt Rogers, The Chronicle

13of 197) Eatsa Bowls of veggies and grains are on the menu at this automat-style restaurant that doesn't have cashiers (diners order at kiosks while workers prepare the food behind an opaque wall, with virtually no interaction between them). There's a curry bowl with roasted vegetables and a Middle Eastern bowl with hummus and falafel. 121 Spear St. and 1 California, Yelp reviewsPhoto: Eric Risberg, Associated Press

14of 196) Thai IdeaVegetarian options at Thai restaurants usually lack creativity with veggie stir-fries and tofu dishes being the only options. This restaurant offers some more inventive takes using meat substitutes. Try veggie lamb with yellow curry or a veggie duck confit glazed with tamarind. 710 Polk St., (415) 440-8344, Yelp reviewsPhoto: John Storey, Special to the Chronicle

17of 193) Tadu Ethiopian KitchenAn Ethiopian cab driver found that many of his clients asked him where to get good Ethiopian food in San Francisco. Elias Shawel never knew where to send them, and so he opened this little spot in the Tenderloin that now has the No. 1 ranking for Ethiopian on Yelp. "I'm originally from Ethiopia, I know how the real Ethiopian foods tastes like and I been looking for a great Ethiopian restaurant here in SF," writes one Yelp user. "Tadu woooooooooow I love everything from the menu." The consensus on Yelp seems to be that the vegetarian plate (pictured) is especially satisfying. 484 Ellis St., (415) 409-6649, Yelp reviewsPhoto: John Storey, Special to the Chronicle

18of 192) GreensOpened in 1979, this Fort Mason restaurant right on the Bay is known for its vegetarian menu using the freshest local ingredients. Fort Mason, Building A, (415) 771-6222, Yelp reviewsPhoto: John Storey, Special to the Chronicle

You may not notice much of Namu Gaji’s menu is now vegan unless you’re counting up the tiny signs that follow each item description: a plus for dishes that are or can be made vegan; a milk carton for vegetarian dishes with dairy; an egg for, well, eggs.

It’s easy to ignore the creeping veganism when ordering, too, unless you’re the kind of diner who examines a menu with meat blinders on. There’s no salted shrimp in Namu’s kimchi, whose recipe chef-partner Dennis Lee reprogrammed three months ago. No beef fat in a chrysanthemum-like cluster of grilled maitake with tart roselle leaves tucked amid the mushroom caps, though you may wonder after a few bites. No pork bones in the new ramen, its two-miso vegetable broth as opaque and throat-blanketing as any tonkotsu ramen.

Lee kind of wants people to know they’re eating vegan food, and kind of doesn’t.

There are few chefs in San Francisco whose cooking has evolved as continuously as Dennis Lee. The Namu Gaji of today is not the Namu of 2010, stoner-jokey and meat-drunk. Nor is it the Namu Gaji of three years ago, even, which framed the vegetables from the restaurant’s 1-acre farm with meat whose succulence bordered on the libertine. Remnants of those eras are on the menu, of course — no successful restaurant alienates its customers by removing every dish it’s best known for. But this vegan shift Lee has quietly been making is finally becoming apparent.

It started, he says, about a year and a half ago when, after traveling around the country to research smoked meats for his short-lived barbecue restaurant inside Magnolia’s Dogpatch brewery, he got a little meat-addled. He stopped eating animal products on a daily basis. His energy and sleep improved. He felt lighter.

“I feel like there’s a biological thing that happens when you eat a ton of meat, where it’s almost a high,” he says. “The satisfaction that people get when they’re eating a meat-heavy meal, that’s more physiological than (about) flavor.”

The Lee brothers, David (left), Dennis and Daniel, at Namu Gaji in 2016.

Photo: Stephen Lam / Special to The Chronicle 2016

His interest accelerated after Dennis’ brother Dan — who takes care of operations at Namu, while third brother David runs the front of house — joined a vegan challenge, competing against co-workers at his office job to see who could last the longest. Dan won.

The brothers’ vegan-friendly diets didn’t move into the Namu kitchen until six months ago. Dennis and his kitchen staff have been looking for ways to show off the produce coming from the Namu Farm, a 2-acre property in Winters (Yolo County). “What better way to feature vegetables than by making them the main part of the dish?” Dennis says. The more they talked about the idea, the more it reflected the broader values they could express as cooks and as a business.

Like a number of chefs before Lee, the puzzle of making vegan food appealed to him, too: How do you give vegan food the bombast of oxtail or blanketing savoriness of fish sauce and Parmesan cheese? Namu’s style constrained him even more: He couldn’t rely on the deep-fryer as a crutch or layer on spices so thickly that their aroma would overtake the palate.

Grilled maitake mushrooms with tart roselle leaves between the caps at Namu Gaji in S.F.

Photo: Jonathan Kauffman / The Chronicle

It’s always been puzzling to me why a dining scene so famous for its fresh produce has remained so meat-driven, and I write this with not a little self-interest in mind, since my husband has been vegetarian for more than 20 years. Even the Cafe at Chez Panisse has subjected us to the tyranny of the lone, token vegetarian entree.

Sean Baker, opening chef at Gather in Berkeley, was the first Bay Area chef to draw national attention for building a menu with both vegans and omnivores in mind. The first menus at Al’s Place, which confined meats to a subsection, earned even more press. More quietly, a number of restaurants, such as State Bird Provisions, Tartine Manufactory and Del Popolo, have nestled plant-driven menus inside omnivorous ones. This fall, Nopalito’s Gonzalo Guzman has finally added enough vegetarian dishes to represent a major shift veg-wise, though it could shift back.

Four months ago, the vegetable section of Namu Gaji’s menu — previously limited to salads and a beef-optional stone-pot rice modeled on dolsot bibimbap — overtook the meat section. Namu’s stalwart ramyeon (Korean ramen) went vegan two months back. Now Lee is wondering: Will vegan dinners find him? Does it matter that he still serves meat? Will it matter to meat eaters?

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Until recently, to become vegan was to commit to an identity, wrapped in politics and an activist community. Even as omnivores are ordering oat milk cappuccinos and grain bowls, the word “vegan” remains a flashpoint. A 2017 poll by Morning Consult reported that consumers found “vegan” to be the least appealing word on a food label, well below “sugar-free” and “high in fiber.” For nine years, I’ve watched omnivores quiz my husband over his vegetarianism, sometimes with curiosity, sometimes restrained mockery. I still am surprised how much of an emotional charge the questions carry for meat-eaters.

A further question: How willing are vegans to support omnivorous restaurants? The San Francisco listings on Happy Cow, the best-known online vegan dining guide, privilege dedicated meatless restaurants, followed by pizza places that offer an almond cheese option. Higher-end restaurants are absent. Perhaps that reflects the stage of life of the contributors, or a politically tinged bias. Maybe San Francisco restaurants have disappointed vegan diners far too often. Who wants to sit down for dinner and find that the lone entree that fits your diet isn’t anything you’d want to eat?

Dennis Lee hopes vegans — people who do commit to the identity, as well as the dietery regimen — find out that he’s introducing another perspective on food made without meat, dairy or eggs. Yet he’s not eliminating meat from the menu. His regular customers have mostly noticed that Namu Gaji is serving more vegetable dishes. “When we do tell people, we try to tell them afterward, so it’s not in the forefront of people’s minds when they sit down to eat,” he says.

What you should know

Where and when: 499 Dolores St. (at 18th Street), San Francisco, 415-431-6268, www.namusf.com. Open for lunch Wednesday-Sunday and dinner Tuesday-Sunday.

What to get: Right now, the maitake mushroom ($18), the miso ramen ($16) and, if you eat dairy, the mushroom dumplings and kimchi arancini.

Jonathan Kauffman has been writing about food for The Chronicle since the spring of 2014. He focuses on the intersection of food and culture — whether that be profiling chefs, tracking new trends in nonwestern cuisines, or examining the impact of technology on the way we eat.

After cooking for a number of years in Minnesota and San Francisco, Kauffman left the kitchen to become a journalist. He reviewed restaurants for 11 years in the Bay Area and Seattle (East Bay Express, Seattle Weekly, SF Weekly) before abandoning criticism in order to tell the stories behind the food. His first book, “Hippie Food: How Back-to-the-Landers, Longhairs and Revolutionaries Changed the Way We Eat,” was published in 2018.